Foundations

What AI is, why it needs governing, and the language of the field

• What Is AI? From Rules to Reasoning Machines — The working definitions of AI that laws actually use, how machines learn, why generative AI changed everything, and what these systems still cannot do. (5 lessons, 45 min)
• The AI Lifecycle: From Data to Deployment to Retirement — The seven stages every AI system passes through, what can go wrong at each one, the supply chain behind every model, and where governance controls actually attach. (5 lessons, 50 min)
• Why AI Needs Governance: A Taxonomy of Harms and Risks — The documented ways AI systems hurt people — bias, privacy invasion, safety failures, security exploits, information pollution, manipulation, and systemic risks — organised into the taxonomy that risk-assessment work is built on, with the real cases behind each category. (6 lessons, 55 min)
• How AI Governance Works: Laws, Standards, and Everything Between — The instruments of AI governance and how to tell them apart: hard law versus soft law, horizontal versus sectoral regulation, risk-based versus rights-based philosophies, the regulatory toolbox, how to read statutes and standards, and an orientation tour of the three pillars — the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, and ISO/IEC 42001. (5 lessons, 55 min)
• Core Ethics Principles and Trustworthy AI — The canonical principles — fairness, transparency, explainability, accountability, privacy, safety and robustness, human oversight — where they came from (OECD, UNESCO, EU HLEG), how NIST turns them into trustworthiness characteristics, why fairness definitions mathematically conflict, and what it takes to move from principles to practice. (5 lessons, 60 min)
• Who’s Who in AI Governance: Actors, Roles, and Responsibilities — The cast of AI governance — providers, deployers, regulators, standards bodies, auditors, safety institutes, civil society — who owes what to whom, and where you fit in. (5 lessons, 55 min)
• From Asimov to the AI Act: A History of AI Governance — Eight decades in five eras: from fictional robot laws through privacy statutes, algorithmic scandals, and principle declarations to binding law — and the recurring patterns that let you predict what happens next. (5 lessons, 55 min)